In the village of El Valle, we visited the market, an organic farm, and then learned how to cook Panamanian sytle. Our guide through this taste day was Reinhild Gamboa, a German-American who moved with her husband, Chef Glenn Gamboa, to El Valle along with the Three Sisters, their Vietnamese pot bellied pigs. We started at the market where we saw a lot of interesting veggies that we didn't recognize. The soil in Panama, and especially around El Valle is very rich. As a matter of fact, the village is located in the center of a collasped volcano so you can imagine just how good the growing conditions might be. The most interesting to all of us was culantro, not cilantro. It is a long leafy thing that is used in everything, especially chimichuri, which is a staple here and everyone has his/her own recipe. It's very simple and I would equate with a pesto but even more versatile.
